Letters Home
by Berzerkerprime
Summary: SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR - after recent events, Clint Barton and Scott Lang commiserate about what their choices have cost them.
Set after the end of Captain America: Civil War, so LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET!

You have hereby been warned.

* * *

Clint was convinced that the national bird of Wakanda was the mosquito. The damned things were huge! And for some reason, the futzing blood-suckers really liked him.

As he leaned against the railing of a far-removed balcony of the Wakandan royal palace, staring out at the mountainous, green landscape far below, Clint's senses tracked three or four of the little bastards circling around his head. When one of them got just a little too close, his hand snapped out, pinching it between thumb and forefinger and sending it to the great beyond. Absently, he flicked the squashed remains away.

He had to admit, the moonlit scenery was pretty impressive. For a nation whose major resource was a metal that had to be mined out of the ground, Wakanda was a surprisingly pristine place. He could hear the sounds of night-creatures in the jungle below, making a sort of white noise that was different from the sounds of night back in Iowa. That was where he really wanted to be right now; home. Not for the first time, he thought about the decision that had taken him away from the farm. It wasn't that he regretted the choice he had made to help Cap and Wanda. He'd make the same one again in a second, even knowing the outcome; it was a matter of honor. But as far as Clint was concerned, he had traded the grey walls of the prison cell in the Raft for a much more picturesque prison of a different kind. Either way, he wasn't free to go home.

Hearing a buzz a little too close to his ear, he swatted at the air again, muttering a curse.

"Whoa! Hey!" a voice exclaimed not far off. "Watch what you're flapping at!"

The sound of the voice made Clint jump and he settled into a defensive posture on instinct, fists raised in front of him and his eyes darting around for the source of the sound. But there was nothing but empty air.

"Down here!" the voice sounded again, from the railing Clint had been leaning against. He followed the sound there and found a very tiny Scott Lang, decked out in the Ant-Man suit, standing on the railing with a black, winged ant nearly the size of a dime next to him.

"The hell, Lang?" Clint exclaimed. "Don't sneak up on me like that. I nearly squashed you!"

"Probably not," Scott replied, "I still have all the strength of full-size me, so it would be all of that versus your hand."

"Don't tempt me to test that theory," Clint said, sourly, returning to his place leaning against the railing.

"Whoa! What bug crawled up your butt?"

Clint shot a glare Scott's direction.

"Uh, yeah, don't... don't answer that."

"What do you want, Lang?" Clint asked with a sigh, returning his gaze to the landscape far below.

"Nothing," Scott replied with a shrug, "I was just out meeting the locals." He gave the ant a pat on the back of its thorax, as if with affection. "Barton, meet Anton. Anton, this is Barton."

"And the ant's name is Anton," Clint breathed out with a roll of his eyes, "well, at least I know what going mad feels like, now."

Scott waved his hands at the ant as if to shoo it away. "G'won, Anton," he said, "I'll see you tomorrow." Scott leaped off the railing and triggered the Pym particles in his suit as he fell. He landed on his feet, full size, next to Clint and removed his helmet. He leaned his back against the railing. "Something eating you?"

"You mean besides the damn mosquitoes?" Clint bit back. "Hey, you can talk to bugs. Can't you tell them to... I dunno, go suck on a lizard or something?"

"Ants," said Scott, "I can talk to ants. Mosquitoes and I are not really on speaking terms. But seriously, man. There something you wanna talk about?"

"No," Clint replied, without hesitation.

It wasn't that he didn't like Scott. On the contrary, he actually liked the guy a lot. Given the company Clint had been keeping the last four years or so, Scott was surprisingly, well... _normal_ , bug-speak besides. No, liking the guy wasn't Clint's problem. It was that they hardly knew each other.

Clint was well aware he wasn't the easiest guy to get to know. He had trust issues that would stun a team of charging oxen and crap like the past few days was the reason. When SHIELD had fallen, it had been Stark that he had run to for shelter, trusting him well enough to keep him secret while the dust settled. Now, all Clint wanted to do was put an arrow in the guy's head. And he wished to holy hell that Stark didn't know about Laura and the kids.

No. No, that was a line even Tony Stark wouldn't cross. Laura and the kids would be safe. Clint had just enough trust in Stark left in him to know that. But that trust had been a long time in coming. It had taken more than two years and the threat of world catastrophe for Clint to have told his teammates, his brothers-in-arms, his dearest secret.

He certainly wasn't going to tell Scott Lang all about it after only four days.

"Well, tough, 'cause I wanna talk," Scott said after Clint realized that there had been a substantial pause, "and since my choices are a super soldier from the 1940s, a guy who flies in combat without a helmet, a teenage girl who can read minds, and you, I figured this was the best choice."

"I'm not your therapist," Clint said impatiently.

"I don't want a therapist," Scott replied instantly, "I just want... I guess I just want to be reminded that there are still normal people around me, that's all."

"Lang, I am an orphan, raised by carnies, trained as an assassin who fights aliens and megalomaniacal robots with a bow and arrow," Clint replied, "what part of all that says 'normal' to you?"

Scott gave a shrug. "I shrink, grow, and talk to ants," he said, "at least you're... I dunno... well-adjusted. And riding on your arrow was pretty sweet, so..."

Clint's mouth curled into an amused smirk at that. "Yeah, that _was_ pretty awesome. And the bit about being Stark's conscience really made it art, man."

"Yeah, I thought so," Scott agreed with a chuckle. Then he sobered. "So, you're the professional spy. What do we do now?"

"We lay low," Clint replied with a shrug, "let things cool down, wait until our trail goes cold, and don't tell anyone doesn't already know where we are."

Clint was hard-pressed not to let that last part show how much it hurt. God! He wanted to call Laura! He wanted to hear her voice, wanted her to hear his. He just wanted for them both to know that the other was alive and unharmed, if not entirely okay.

"Yeah," Scott said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking away, out toward the landscape, "that last part's sort of the problem."

"What, you got a girl waiting for you back home?" Clint asked

"Yeah," Scott replied, slouching further against the railing and his gaze softening, "her name's Cassie and she means the world to me. Has since the instant I first saw her."

"Must be a hell of a girl," said Clint.

"Yeah," said Scott, "it's her birthday a couple months from now. I missed a couple not too long ago and I promised her I wouldn't miss another. I wish I could find a way to send her something."

"Lang, you can't," Clint said, his tone going as serious as he could muster without being alarmist, "you can't contact her, you can't send her anything. Not with a guy like Ross after us. If it's able to be tracked, then-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Scott said with a resigned sigh, "what would a shrinking, growing, ant-speaking fugitive in Africa get for a ten-year-old anyway?"

That brought Clint up short. Did he just say "ten-year-old?" He turned to look at Scott more directly now, confusion on his face.

"Wait, Cassie's your _daughter_?" he asked, his eyebrows shooting toward his hairline.

"Yeah," Scott said, unzipping the front of his suit and reaching in. He pulled a rumpled photo out of a pocket somewhere inside and handed it to Clint, "only perfect thing I ever managed to make."

Clint looked at the picture. There was a little girl, just about Lila's age, missing both of her top front teeth and holding tight to a bug-eyed, mangy-looking stuffed rabbit as if it was the most precious thing in the world.

"Well, look at that," Clint said, "and here I thought _you_ were the heart-breaker. Sorry, you don't seem the type to have kids." He handed the photo back, knowing its worth to the man. This was the most precious thing Scott had with him.

"Yeah, well," Scott said, looking at the picture, fondly, "she was kind of an accident at the time. But as soon as I saw her and her skinny little fingers and tiny little toes, I turned into the type real quick." He tucked the photo back inside the pocket in his suit from which it had come. "She's the best part of me, and... I dunno, I know why we had to do what we did. But, you have no idea how much it feels like I let her down."

Well, if that wasn't just twisting the knife into Clint's gut. Here, Scott had told him his most precious thing, his deepest love, all because he just needed someone to talk to about the thing that was hurting him the most. And how had Clint reacted? Like a jackass, of course. He had shut down, kept the guy at arm's length and insisted on not caring about Scott's dumb personal problems. But the guy was hurting, deeply.

And Clint knew exactly what it felt like.

As Scott continued to stare off into the distance, Clint shifted uncomfortably and leaned his elbows against the railing once again. His hand unconsciously went to the picture of Laura and the kids that he had in his own jacket pocket. He still hesitated to bring it out, to show them off like the proud dad he always wanted to act like but couldn't. Clint's tell-no-one policy had really been for the best, since it prevented some of the enemies he had made over the years from finding them. But one more look at the broken expression on Scott's face toppled that last obstacle like a house of cards.

"Well, uh, actually," Clint said, not meeting Scott's gaze and pulling the picture out to hand him, "I kinda... do."

Scott snapped out of his depressed reverie to snag the picture from Clint and study it.

"Wait, seriously?" Scott asked. "Hawkeye the international super-spy assassin and Avenger has kids? And that gorgeous of a wife? No!"

"That's Laura," Clint said, feeling uncomfortably exposed, "and our kids, Cooper, Lila, and Nate."

"And you said _I_ wasn't the type!"

"Well, if you're gonna ruin the moment," Clint said, snatching the photo back.

"Hey! Hey! No, no, no!" Scott said quickly, trying and failing utterly to regain some composure. "I mean, sorry. I just... didn't expect you to be quite _this_ normal."

"Yeah, well," said Clint, stuffing the picture back into his jacket pocket, "the Scarlet Pimpernel routine works pretty well for keeping the bad guys in the dark about it, so..."

Scott threw a hand up in the air, clearly frustrated. "Shit, that train left the station for me last year," he said, "damned psycho Darren Cross. Any ideas for a contingency plan?"

"Not much," Clint mused, "short of delivering God's own wrath down upon anyone who even looks at your girl the wrong way, I'm afraid I got nothing for you."

"Ooh! I like that, though!" Scott said. "Maybe grow really big, do a whole fee fie foe fum routine..."

"I'd just shoot 'em."

"Aww, no terror in that."

"That's why you warn them weeks before hand. Spend their last days on Earth sleep-deprived, paranoid, and crazy."

Scott grimaced and sucked air in through his teeth. "I think I'm glad I ended up on your side. You've clearly thought about this a lot."

Clint gave a bitter laugh. "Yeah, I have at that," he said.

There was a long moment of silence between them as they both looked out over the moonlit landscape. Neither one of them needed to say anything further on the subject. It was now an unspoken understanding between them, something they each knew that only the other would understand. Clint hesitated to use the term "support group," but he figured that was as good a description as anything.

Scott gave a sigh and pushed off from the railing, scooping his helmet off the ground where he had left it. "Gettin' late," he said, "should probably give the suit a rest for the night." He began to head for the door to go inside, shuffling along and looking like the weight of the world had been on his shoulders, but lifted a little.

"Uh, hey, Lang, um," Clint said, turning to look at Scott again, bringing the younger man to a halt, "I might have a channel or two... some contacts who happen to owe me their lives and know how to get packages from point A to point B without questions being asked. Cap's already asked me about it. Maybe I could... I dunno, swing something."

"What do you mean?" Scott asked, looking confused.

"I'm saying... find something for Cassie for her birthday," Clint replied, "I'll take care of the rest."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I mean, you made a promise, right? Can't let her down just because we've gone all A-Team."

Scott gave a half-hearted smirk, his eyes sliding away from Clint. "Yeah," he said, "yeah, that's true. Um... thanks, Barton."

"Clint," the archer corrected, "call me Clint."

"Uh, yeah, sure," Scott said, awkwardly pointing at himself, "and it's Scott. I only go by Lang when I'm in prison."

"Sure," Clint replied with an equally awkward nod, beginning to turn back to his gaze of the dark landscape.

"And Clint," Scott said, pulling the archer's gaze back to him one more time, "we'll get back to them. One way or another."

"You really believe that?" Clint asked.

"Have to," Scott replied, "anything else would kill me."

"Yeah," Clint agreed, his eyes sliding away again, "yeah, you're right." He pushed off from the railing and wandered in Scott's direction. "Hey, why don't we find Cap, Wanda, and Sam," he said, on hand landing on Scott's shoulder, "maybe get some team bonding time in or something."

"Yeah, I could go for that," said Scott as they both wandered inside, "hey, do you think a ten-year-old girl with a passion for ugly rabbits would like a giant obsidian cat statue?"

"That's a little bigger than I can manage."

"I can shrink it."

"I think T'Challa would notice it was gone."

"Yeah, you're probably right. Maybe they have like a gift shop or something. I could find a miniature and send one of my blue disks along with it. Whadaya think?"

"And have that thing go off in transit? Are you nuts?"


End file.
